Isaiah washes us clean

Among the Dead Sea Scrolls found at Qumran, which is a place that my wife, Mary, and I visited just more than four years ago right outside the Dead Sea in Southern Palestine was a nearly complete scroll of the prophet Isaiah.

In about 740 BC, Isaiah received his call to prophesy in the form of a vision in the temple at Jerusalem. Isaiah, the son of Amoz, wrote these words (among many, many others): "Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth; for the Lord has spoken: 'some have I reared, but they have rebelled against me. The ox knows its owner, and the ass its master's crib; but Israel does not know, my people do not understand."

In other words, a people laden with iniquity, offspring of evildoers, sons who deal with iniquity, forsook the Lord, despised the Holy One of Israel, utterly estranged the Lord himself on a beautiful Friday morning, and stuff happened because of it.

That's when stuff always happens. That's when noisy things always happens. That's when stuff occurs.

This morning, after a roaring night of flashes and bangs when God had finished his business of bangs and flashes, I was pondering what God had in store for the rest of the day.

Isaiah wrote, "Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; defend the fatherless, plead for the widow. Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlett, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land, but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured by the sword: for the mouth of the Lord has spoken."

The prophet was making it clear, seems to me, that we are to stop doing evil and let God correct oppression, defend the fatherless and plead for the widow. You reckon? The prophet, it seems to me, is making our sins -- as red and prominent as Ms. Johansson's Scarlett(ness) -- white as snow on a winter European afternoon.

There you have it. The question is can we then make this happen? The answer is almost always kinda, sorta, maybe. The prophet, early in his prophecy, would argue, "Come now, let us argue it out, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow; though they are red like scarlet, they shall be like snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be like wool." Almost always kinda, sorta, maybe ... you see?

Are we clear?
Do we get it?

Will we ever get it?

I suspect that Isaiah understood that to be God's truth long before God's people understood that to be God's truth. I really do.

The answer is almost always ... kinda, sorta, maybe.

Not always. Not for sure. But kinda, sorta, maybe. That's the way this works. One day, thousands of years after Isaiah's incredibly beautiful and powerful writing was completed, prophecy worked its way into the framework of scripture. I believe God's words crept into our being, crept into our understanding, crept into our hearts.

"Seek justice, correct oppression, defend the fatherless, plead for the widow. Come let us reason together..."

Let that be our task this beautiful, crisp Friday morning, my friend, my neighbor, my brother.